bastone.org

Author: joemama

  • The beginning of the end for film cameras

    I knew this day would eventually come. Nikon will be phasing out most of their film camera line. A high end camera and a lower end camera.

    I’m a Canon man myself, and I use film, so this announcement doesn’t immediately affect me. But it wouldn’t surprise me to see Canon eventually follow suit and start to phase out their film line as well. I prefer my film camera to my digital, but my digital camera isn’t that good. I like to have the total manual control of my Canon Rebel.

    Eventually, I would like to get a digital Canon Rebel, but I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of my film camera. There’s something refreshing to hear the shutter click and the film advance.

  • Alito: Yay or Nay?

    So what do you think about Samuel Alito?

    The only thing I could gather is that Judge Alito was pretty evasive in answering questions. Example from a NYT article asking for his opinion regarding the case regarding a government’s ability to take property for economic development under eminent domain:

    “It touches some very sensitive nerves. When someone’s home is being taken away using the power of eminent domain, that is, that is a blow to a lot of people, even if they’re going to get compensated at fair market values for their home.”

    What kind of answer is that? It’s a typical response I would expect from a politician. It’s not the type of response I would expect from someone up for the Supreme Court. But I’m not surprised. This kind of dog and pony show has been around for a long time. Just look at the Clarence Thomas hearings. No one remembers the actual questions; they remember the pubic hair in the Coke.

    At least these hearings haven’t sunk to that level. I guess that’s a positive thing…

  • Flame Anonymously, Go To Jail?

    For now on, if you “annoy” someone online without disclosing your true identity, you can face fines and up to two years in prison.

    Wha? Who decides what’s annoying?

    Now as long as you annoy someone and don’t lie about who you are, you’re good. But lie about who you are, you might be going to the slammer!

  • That Crazy Pat Robertson!

    Do you think Pat Robertson actually believes the stuff he says?

    First, he said that the president of Venezuela should be assassinated. Then he told the people of Dover, PA not to pray to God if a natural disater hit their town because they voted out a school board that favored “intelligent design.” Now he is saying that Israeli PM Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke at the hands of God.

    Hasn’t he lost all credibility yet? These comments are not constructive at all. Instead he just seems to want to incite controversy. What is going to be his next wild idea?

  • Lego Mindstorms NXT

    There is a facinating article on Wired talking about the new Lego Mindstorms NXT.

    At first, I was skeptical of the whole idea behind programming Legos and making robots out of them. They are for building things. I’ve never really liked the idea of sets that are used for building specific things, like all the Star Wars sets.

    After reading the article though, I really like these. It reminds me of a class I took in college, where Andrew and I programmed an RC car to track along a white strip of tape on the floor. I followed the schematics, Andrew did the programming. That was a really fun course, and it was gratifying to actually see the RC car run on the track.

    Maybe when our child is a bit older, we’ll be getting this for them. But that would be a long way off, and our kid might not be interested. So to play it safe, I might just need to get it for me instead…

  • Happy New Year

    It was good to see Dick Clark doing his New Years Eve thing again. Did anyone else notice that he got a little confused on the countdown? It was down to about 30 seconds, and all of a sudden he started counting from 20.

    Regardless, New Years Eve means Dick Clark. For every countdown that I can remember, he was there. I wish him many more trips to Times Square and to continue his recovery from his stroke.

    Did anyone notice that Regis (famed for “saving” ABC) was doing the countdown on Fox, while Ryan Seacrest (Fox, of American Idol (ugh…) fame) was on ABC? I found that to be an interesting switch.

    Here’s to a great 2006!

  • 2005: A Year of Lists

    Being the last day of 2005 (or Hogmanay in Scotland), I had noticed there were a ton of lists out there. I haven’t found any that were really interesting, so here’s just a random sampling of lists I found.

    Blogpulse – 2005 Year in Review
    Google Zeitgeist
    The only list that matters…
    Stories You Missed (But what if I didn’t miss them?)
    The Culture Awards 2005

    Of course, you could take a look for yourself. Go ahead and add to the list if you want.

    Have a safe and happy New Year!

  • Toothbrush Sanitizer

    I don’t know if it really works, but a toothbrush sanitizer would at least make me think my toothbrush is clean. Put the toothbrush in the case, turn the thing on, and your toothbrush is clean. Or so they claim. The UV light would kill any nasty buggers on the brush.

    That’s fine and all, but why couldn’t I turn on a UV light next to my toothbrush and accomplish the same thing?

  • Sharon’s Trip to the ER

    Update – 1/2/06 10:48 – I’ve added pictures of Sharon’s thumb to the gallery.

    On Monday night, Sharon was slicing red onions with a mandolin (not that one, this one) and caught a piece of her thumb. Of course, she wasn’t using the entire guard. Instead, she was using just the guide, which got stuck on the onion, slipped, and she sliced her thumb.

    I ran upstairs trying to find anything that could cover up her thumb, while Sharon tried to control the bleeding on her own. Looking back, maybe I shouldn’t have run upstairs so quickly. After a couple minutes, we decided a trip to the ER was in order. All that was left was collecting the sliced-off section and putting it on ice.

    We got through the waiting room and to our own room exceptionally fast. However, when we saw a TV in the room, we knew we were in trouble. There was a guy across the hall that was in because his nose was all busted up, and he was in excruciating pain whenever he sneezed. In the room next to him was a girl that was getting a cyst removed from her buttocks. Even with the door closed and our TV on, her screams of pain came across loud and clear. So we waited.

    After about an hour or so, Sharon was finally looked at. Since it was more of a slice, attaching the bit we brought it would do no good. Stitches were also out of the question; there was nothing to stitch up. So they injected a local pain killer and wrapped it up. We now clean her thumb and redress it twice a day.

    I got some pictures of the first time the gauze was taken off. Look for them next week, once we get home.

  • Bye Bye, Privacy

    Where do I even start?

    The NYT disclosed that President Bush signed an order allowing the NSA to conduct wiretaps and eavesdrop on U.S. citizens. Now it wasn’t on entirely domestic communications, but communications which international in some aspect.

    How hard would it be to get a court order allowing this? It wouldn’t take too much work to do, especially since they could use secret Foreign courts to get it. It’s just another example of this administration’s contempt for due process. Warrentless searches totally circumvent the idea of checks and balances.

    I was listening to a program on the way home from work yesterday, and the host asked people what they thought about this development. He only spoke to a few people, but no one was up in arms. And that was scary. The overriding attitude was, “I have nothing to hide, so why not?” But that’s not the point – there are certain rules and laws that everyone must abide by, regardless of how “bad” someone may be.

    In some welcome news, I am glad to see some members of the Senate finally wake up and start to question the Patriot Act. This all goes back to something I mentioned a while ago. We need to have working checks and balances in place. There needs to be a reason for obtaining a warrent to search someone, but the House version of extending the Patriot act.

    What do you think? How has your opinion changed with the news disclosed this week?

    Update (6:56 pm) – To drive the point home, a student at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents for requesting “The Little Red Book” by Mao Tse-Tung to read for a class.